Intuition and the Creation of a Better World

Cultivating the Intuition

Assagioli, Roberto

It seems evident that the will possesses no direct power over the intuitive function; it can even hamper its functioning. But … the will can perform a most helpful indirect action; it can create and keep clear the channel of communication along which the intuitive impressions descend. It does this by imposing a temporary check on the distracting activities of the other psychological functions.

The will can encourage (encourage, not coerce, I repeat) the intuitive operation by formulating questions to be addressed to the superconscious sphere, the seat of the intuition. These questions must be given a clear and precise form. The replies may come promptly, but more often they appear after a lapse of time and when least expected.

Roberto Assagioli, The Act of Will, pp. 195-196,

Assagioli, Roberto

Intuition, as well as the other psychological functions, can be activated, following the general law that attention and interest foster their manifestation. It has been said that attention has feeding power; it has also a focusing power. One could even say that it has an evocative power, and attention really implies appreciation and therefore valuation…

A characteristic of intuitions is that they are fleeting and, curiously, very easily forgotten, in spite of the fact that at the time they enter the field of consciousness they are very vivid and the subject does not think he can or will forget them easily. Such intuitions can be likened to a stray bird entering a room, circling swiftly around it, and then after a few seconds flying out of the window. The practical deduction from this "fleeting" characteristic is to write down immediately any intuitions we may have – more particularly when we recall the distorting effect of time on all our recollections…

… Intuition is the creative advance towards reality. Intellect has, first, the valuable and necessary function of interpreting, i.e., of translating, verbalizing in acceptable mental terms, the results of the intuition. Second, to check its validity; and third, to coordinate and to include it into the body of already accepted knowledge. These functions are the rightful activity of the intellect, without its trying to assume functions which are not its province. A really fine and harmonious interplay between the two can work perfectly in a successive rhythm: intuitional insight, interpretation, further insight and its interpretation, and so on.

Aurobindo, Sri

… As with truth of religion, so with the highest and deepest truth of beauty, the intellectual reason cannot seize its inner sense and reality, not even the inner truth of the apparent principles and processes, unless it is aided by a higher insight not its own. As it cannot give a method, process or rule by which beauty can or ought to be created, so also it cannot give to the appreciation of beauty that deeper insight which it needs; it can only help to remove the dullness and vagueness of the habitual perceptions and conceptions of the lower mind which prevent it from seeing beauty or which give it false and crude aesthetic habits: it does this by giving to the mind an external idea and rule of the elements of the thing it has to perceive and appreciate. What is farther needed is the awakening of a certain vision, an insight and an intuitive response in the soul. Reason which studies always from outside, cannot give this inner and more intimate contact; it has to aid itself by a more direct insight springing from the soul itself and to call at every step on the intuitive mind to fill up the gap of its own deficiencies.

Sri Aurobindo, Social & Political Thought, pp. 132-3

Bailey, Alice

The manifestation of intuitive perception upon the physical plane is greatly aided by the effort to read, to understand and then to express that understanding in words.

Alice Bailey, Discipleship in the New Age, Vol. 1, p. 329

Bailey, Alice

The effort … to grasp that which cannot be expressed in words produces a downpouring of the abstract mind or of the intuition, and this, in its turn, stimulates and develops the brain cells and produces a steady stabilisation of the power to stand in "spiritual being"; then it becomes possible to grasp the inexpressible and to live by its power.

Alice Bailey, Esoteric Psychology, Vol. I, p. 59

Bernbaum, Edwin

A powerful symbol like Shambhala can do more than simply stand for some hidden truth or aspect of reality: It can also act as a window that opens up a view of something beyond itself. If we approach it in the right way, we may be able to look right through it and catch a glimpse of what it symbolizes. At such a moment, when a symbol yields a sudden insight or flash of intuition, it actually seems to turn transparent like a pane of glass and reveal a hidden vista full of unexpected depth and meaning. We suddenly see the implications of what it symbolizes stretching away before us, as if into a far distance. The symbol gives us a sense of an open and spacious panorama that extends beyond the limited horizon of what we know. In this panorama we may find the solution to a mundane problem or a mystical experience of the universe. We may get a sudden understanding of how an automobile works, or, like the English poet William Blake,

... see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower.

Edwin Bernbaum, The Way to Shambhala, p. 133

Brunton, Paul

Whereas we can reach the intellect only through thinking, we can reach the spirit only through intuition. The practice of meditation is simply the deepening, broadening and strengthening of intuition. A mystical experience is simply a prolonged intuition.

Paul Brunton, Perspectives

Ferrucci, Piero

Symbols can … have a cognitive function. As Jung put it, they "point to something that is very little known or completely unknown." (1) They connect us with regions of our being which are completely unavailable to our analytical mind. Thus they train us to understand by seeing directly, jumping the intermediary stage of discursive thinking, which is sometimes more of an obstacle than an aid to understanding. This deeper kind of understanding awakens a faculty whose importance is almost universally neglected: the intuition.

We become intuitively receptive to the essence of a symbolic image by
holding it steadily in our mind, letting it irradiate our awareness with its subtle quality. Such contemplation of an image may lead to an identification with it. Whether it happens spontaneously or intentionally, identification enables us to understand symbols from within, and intuition is nothing less than the understanding from within of the formless reality which the symbol represents.

(1) C.G. Jung, Simboli della transformazione, p. 222

Piero Ferrucci, What We May Be: The Vision and Techniques of Psychosynthesis. Pp. 118-119

Gawain, Shakti

We need to be willing to let our intuition guide us, and then be willing to follow that guidance directly and fearlessly.

Shakti Gawain

Khan, Hazrat Inayat

The first step in intuition is to understand the symbolical meaning of different things, and the next is to express them symbolically.

Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Complete Sayings of Hazrat Inayat Khan, p. 42

Thakar, Vimala

In the sacred emptiness of silence, flows the Life Force, the infinite creativity in the form of the human body without any resistance from any corner of that being. Ordinarily when the creativity of that totality or wholeness whispers in our hearts there is resistance. The 'I', the 'Me' assuming the airs of wisdom, knowledge and experience, retorts back to the wisdom of the Creativity and says: "What you are suggesting is not practical. It is not adaptable in my social life, in my family life".

When there is the ending of the momentum of the total human past, and there is a release, as it were, from the prison-house of the 'Me' as a separate entity then the creativity of the whole Life can manifest its activisation and can flow through all the layers of that human form without any obstacle. The idea of the 'Me' and the identification with that idea of the 'Me', is the greatest obstruction to the flow of creativity, to the flow of innocency in our lives.

In the silence, innocency reigns supreme. In the emptiness of silence, there is no obstruction of knowledge, memory. There is no resistance of the 'Me' introducing psychological time and saying to the creative energy "Not now, tomorrow, next year". The 'Me' arrests the flow of creativity and wants to adapt it, wants to pour it into the mould of social norms and value-structures. Then it is only the ashes of creativity that remain there, which the 'Self', the 'Me' holds in its fist and says: 'I had an inspiration, I had a glimpse.' It wants to hold onto that experience.

Vimala Thakar, Himalayan Pearls, pp. 48-49

Vaughan, Frances

If you are willing to confront the fears that arise when you are faced with letting go of some cherished illusion, then intuition allows you to know things as they are. At this point, when you have made commitment to your own inner truth, you may be increasingly willing to follow the guidance of intuition rather than try to use it to fulfill egotistical desires. The steady pursuit of self-knowledge leads eventually to a self-transcendence in which personal needs and desires are seen in a larger perspective. The intuitive realization that one is part of a larger whole, inseparable from the environment in which one lives, and that being is essentially the same in everyone, albeit in an infinite variety of patterns and forms, allows one to see oneself and the universe as an interdependent unit.

Frances E. Vaughan, Awakening Intuition, p. 181

Whitmore, Diana

A working hypothesis is that the Self is at the core of the superconscious, just as the 'I' or personal self is at the core of the personality and its various functions (physical, emotional and mental). Interaction between the Self and the 'I' can occur or flow in either direction. When the contents of the superconscious descend into our conscious experience, we receive inspiration, intuition, insight or peak experiences. These moments happen to us, particularly when we least expect them or have not been actively seeking them. However, the flow may also occur in the other direction, through elevating our personality, through consciously aspiring, in a realistic, grounded and purposeful way, towards the heights or depths of our being.

Diana Whitmore, Psychosynthesis in Education, pp. 174-175

Harpur, Patrick

If we wish to reinstate the Soul of the World in her original glory, we will have to do more than introduce environmental remedies, which, however well-meaning, tend to stand at an equal and opposite pole - that is, to be as literalistic as the damage we do. We have to cultivate a new perspective, or seeing through; and a sense of metaphor, a seeing double. We may even, if we are to shift our obdurate literalism, have to let in a bit of madness, give ourselves up to a spot of ecstasy. We can always make a start by trying to develop a better aesthetic sense, an appreciation of beauty, which is the first attribute of soul. For the way we see the world can restore its soul, and the way the world is ensouled can restore our vision.

Abhishiktananda, Swami

There is no doubt that it is by becoming more and more aware of the Divine Presence in the secret place of our hearts that we become more and more aware of that same Divine Presence surrounding us on all sides.... Truly speaking there is no outside and no inside, no without and no within, in the mystery of God and in the Divine Presence.

Swami Abhishiktananda, cited in J. Cutsinger, Not of This World: A Treasury of Christian Mysticism. Bloomington, IN, World Wisdom, 2003, p. 216

Bloom, John

Those who have walked a labyrinth with an open heart know the power of the experience. Its path is a ritual journey from the threshold at the entrance to a more metaphoric threshold at the center — a path of discovery and self-knowledge. Walking the path, one feels part of some deep archetypal world filled with energetic and intuitional processes. Once at the center, one can travel no farther on the horizontal plane of the earth. Instead, the journey becomes vertical, traveling from the gravitation stillness of the feet on the earth and up through the uprightness of the spine toward the sky. It is on this vertical axis that one turns to commence the outward journey. It is a beautiful and powerful moment, that merging of vertical and horizontal. It is a private journey in which my inner and outer self meet and through integration make meaning together.

John Bloom, The Genius of Money, Great Barrington, Steiner Books, 2009, p. 58

Lipson, Michael

Behind the initial, denotative meaning of a meditative sentence or image or natural object, there lie other meanings toward which I can project my intuitive sensing. This means letting go of the sentence, image, or object, while staying on track with its gesture or staying within its neighborhood of meaning. If I succeed in feeling the next-higher meaning or meanings, these cannot necessarily be expressed with any other words than those of the initial meditation sentence, for example; yet, now this sentence has power and life it never had before.